VoIP, Video Conferencing and Mobile Data: get on the bandwagon, or find yourself out of sync with today's technological advances.

• Author: Colby, Kent L.
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

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Consider the Internet--and its ability to be omnipresent--and then add voice capability. The result is voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, but some call it digital phone. Regardless, it goes beyond the digital voice that has been around since the early '60s when Bell Labs developed the T1, or the ability to digitally combine 24 analog voice channels into a single-digital line. Combining the digitized voice with Internet protocol encapsulates the data into the packet-switched internetwork. Think of IP as the network layer that provides the unique global addressing that enables communications over the vast Internet. Simply put, VoIP removes the dedicated phone lines from telephony and allows the packet stream to be self-leveling. VoIP traffic utilizes IP backbones, rather than the public-switched telephone network, or PSTN.

VoIP COMES IN MANY FLAVORS

Businesses of all sizes are increasing productivity and reducing costs with VoIP-based communications. The converged, sophisticated Internet and intranet infrastructures, offer a wide variety of options for companies looking for ways to avoid toll charges and to keep their voice traffic on IP networks. End-to-end VoIP calls are a reality, if in their infancy.

Carriers are offering end-to-end VoIP services for corporate customers, as well as individuals. Alaska Communications Systems (ACS) has rolled out ACS goVocal[TM] Internet Phone Service. With goVocal[TM], business users and individual subscribers are offered unlimited calling to other goVoca[TM] subscribers, no matter the location. The product offers virtually unlimited calling in and out of state. ACS spokesperson Mary Gasperlin says the system's analog telephone adapter (ATA) plugs into a broadband connection any place, anywhere, and provides dial tone to a standard telephone. Traveling business people take along their phone number and phone features wherever they go, even overseas. Subscribers receive two telephone numbers: typically an Alaska number along with another from most any other state.

"Businesses save money using a VoIP," says Mike Felix, AT&T, or AT&T Alascom president. AT&T Alascom is part of the rebranding, with AT&T's recent purchase of Dobson Communications. Now, all of AT&T's holdings in the state fall under the AT&T moniker.

At present, the company offers high-speed VoIP transport for business and enterprise solutions. Companies with multiple offices and branches in villages and cities around...